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Thursday, February 3, 2011

Christian Zionism

Christian Zionism can be defined as Christian support for the Zionist cause — the return of the Jewish people to its biblical homeland in Israel. It is a belief among some Christians that the return of Jews to Israel is in line with a biblical prophecy, and is necessary for Jesus to return to Earth as its king. These Christians are partly motivated by the writings of the Bible and the words of the prophets. However, they are also driven to support Israel because they wish to “repay the debt of gratitude to the Jewish people for providing Christ and the other fundamentals of their faith,” and to support a political ally, according to David Brog, author Standing With Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State.

Christian Zionists interpret both the Torah and the New Testament as prophetic texts that describe future events of how the world will one day end with the return of Jesus from Heaven to rule on Earth. Israel and its people are central to their vision. They interpret passages from the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Isaiah as foreshadowing the coming Christian era. The New Testament Book of Revelation is read by many Christians as a prophetic text of how the world will be in the End Times.

Christian support for Israel is not a recent development. Its politcal roots reach as far back to the 1880s, when a man named William Hechler formed a committee of Christian Zionists to help move Russian Jewish refugees to Palestine after a series of pogroms. In 1884, Hechler wrote a pamphlet called “The Restoration of Jews to Palestine According to the Prophets.” A few years later, he befriended Theodor Herzl after reading Herzl’s book The Jewish State, and joined Herzl to drum up support for Zionism. Hechler even arranged a meeting between Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II to discuss Herzl’s proposal to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. The two men remained close friends up until Herzl’s death in 1904.

An important milestone in the history of Christian Zionism occurred in 1979, almost a century after William Hechler approached Herzl and offered to mobilize Christian support for a Jewish state: the founding of the Moral Majority. Founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority was an organization made up of conservative Christian political action committees that succeeded in mobilizing like-minded individuals to register and vote for conservative candidates. With nearly six million members, it became a powerful voting bloc during the 1980s and was credited for giving Ronald Reagan the winning edge in the 1980 elections. One of the Moral Majority’s four founding principles was “support for Israel and Jewish people everywhere.”

In 1980, Falwell, who ran a television ministry that reached millions of viewers, said of Israel: “I firmly believe God has blessed America because America has blessed the Jew. If this nation wants her fields to remain white with grain, her scientific achievements to remain notable, and her freedom to remain intact, America must continue to stand with Israel.” Falwell disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989, but conservative Christians have remained vocal supporters of Israel though they lacked a strong formal structure for pro-Israel political action.

Christian Zionists, through their volunteer work, political support, and financial assistance to Israel and Jewish causes, have shown that they are stalwart friends of Israel. They have donated large sums of money to support Israel, including to charities that pay the costs of bringing Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia to Israel. For example, Pastor John Hagee has raised more than $4.7 million for the United Jewish Communities. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to help poor Jews across the world move to Israel.

When Israel’s tourism industry was at a low point between 2000 and 2003 due to the Palestinian War and terrorism, Christian tourists visited Israel in numbers that were sometimes greater than that of the Jewish community. Televangelists such as Pat Robertson and Benny Hinn visited Israel during this period and used their broadcasts to tell their millions of viewers it was safe to visit Israel. Another pro-Israel group, the Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign, sponsored four missions to Israel. Christians also helped the Israeli tourism industry and economy from home by attending “Shop Israel” days where Israeli merchants would come to America and sell their products.

Despite their support for Israel, many Jews however, are uncomfortable with Christian Zionists. This discomfort is fed by Christian anti-Semitism, Christian replacement theology, evangelical proselytizing, and and disagreements over domestic and political issues.

Dispensationalist Christianity, an interpretive or narrative framework for understanding the overall flow of the Bible, teaches that Christianity did not replace Judaism, but that it restored lost elements of it. The dispensationalist view of the Bible is that the Old Testament is foreshadowing for what will occur in the New Testament and, at the end, Jesus returns to reign on Earth after an epic battle between good and evil. Israel plays a central role in the dispensationalist view of the end of the world. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was seen as a milestone to many dispensationalists on the path toward Jesus’ return. In their minds, now that the Jews again had regained their homeland, all Jews were able to return to Israel, just as had been prophesied in the Bible. As described in the Book of Revelation, there is an epic battle that will take place in Israel after it is reestablished — Armaggedon — in which it is prophesied that good will finally triumph over evil. However, in the process, two-thirds of the Jews in Israel die and the other third are converted to Christianity. Jesus then returns to Earth to rule for 1,000 years as king.

Although these Christians do hope for a Messianic age, the majority of them do not wish for the deaths of thousands of Jews during Armageddon. Dispensationalist Christians believe that the Jewish people, not Christians, are the ones who were promised Israel in the Bible. In their view, Christianity did not come into existence to replace Judaism, but to restore it. This view has surpassed replacement theology as the dominant form of Christian thought regarding Israel in America today. Jews who are suspicious of Christian Zionist motives are usually unaware that many Christian supporters of Israel have abandoned replacement theology.

Aside from anti-Semitism and Christian replacement theology, many Jews are wary of the fact that many evangelical Christians simply want to convert them to Christianity or speed up the Second Coming of Christ. David Brog refutes this claim:

“Evangelicals who support Israel most certainly do want to convert people. Evangelicals who don’t support Israel also want to convert people. The mission of sharing the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ is central to being an evangelical. But it is important to note that this is not about converting just the Jews — Christians want to share their faith with Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and their Christian friends and neighbors who have yet to be born again. The important question is this: Is evangelical support for Israel merely a tool in the effort to convert the Jews? Is this merely some scheme to soften the Jews up so that they can better sell Jesus to them? And the answer to this question is absolutely not. If anything, the opposite it true.

Christian Zionists say Jews have no reason to distrust their motives for supporting Israel because they do not believe they can speed up the Second Coming of Christ. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is written that Jesus said about his return, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”

Pastor John Hagee, a longtime supporter of Israel, based at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, heads Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a pro-Israel group established in 2006. Hagee has denounced replacement theology, and says of Israel: “We believe in the promise of Genesis 12:3 regarding the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. We believe that this is an eternal covenant between God and the seed of Abraham to which God is faithful.” Evangelical leader Pat Robertson echoed this statement while on his tour of Israel during the Israel-Hizbullah war, saying, “The Jews are God’s chosen people. Israel is a special nation that has a special place in God’s heart. He will defend this nation. So Evangelical Christians stand with Israel. That is one of the reasons I am here.”

Pastor Hagee claims that he and other Christian Zionists support Israel because they owe a debt of gratitude to the Jewish people, and not because they want Jews to convert to Christianity. The Jewish people gave the world Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the prophets, of whom there were “not a Baptist in the bunch...The Jewish people do not need Christianity to explain their existence. But Christians cannot explain our existence without Judaism. The roots of Christianity are Jewish.”

Jews are also uncomfortable with Christian Zionists because most have few other common political interests besides their support for Israel. The majority of American Jews are politically and socially liberal. Christian Zionists are on the whole politically conservative Republicans who, for example, oppose abortion and gay marriage, and support prayer in public schools. Most Jews are particularly concerned over what they see as the Christian Right’s efforts to weaken the separation between church and state. The Anti-Defamation League’s director, Abe Foxman, has been particularly outspoken and has said that if the domestic agenda of the Christian Right ever materializes, it will turn American Jews into “second-class citizens in our own country.”

Christian Zionists are also more conservative on Israel than many Jews. They favor Israel maintaining all of its settlements in the West Bank, and were opposed to the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Some prominent Christian Zionists have been highly critical of Israeli government policy of giving over parts of Israel to the Palestinian people. Christian Zionists, like followers of the Israeli Right, believe that Israel should never cede any section of Israel to the Palestinians because Israel was given to the Jews by God. After former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon implemented the disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip and then fell ill a few months later, Pat Robertson claimed that his illness was divine retribution for giving up part of biblical Israel. When asked about Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s convergence plan to evacuate settlements in the West Bank, Robertson said, “It’s an absolute disaster...I don't think the holy God is going to be happy about someone giving up his land.”

Conservative Christians, in general, are viewed as particularly influential with the Bush Administration and Republican Congress, and Christian Zionists are consequently viewed as also having greater access to decisionmakers. It is not clear, however, that pro-Israel Christians have exerted decisive influence on any significant decisions and their clout is expected to decline if Democrats regain the White House and/or the majority in Congress.

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Palestinian Identity Theft

Feature Video

Israel Should Make Peace With Whom?

Click HERE for more information

Description

Israel wants peace... and is willing to sacrifice a large portion of its homeland to end the conflict. Here are three clear points that highlight Israel's commitment to peace and shared Western values.

Favorite Quotes About Israel & Palestine

REMEMBER: ISRAEL IS BAD!
ITS EXISTENCE KEEPS REMINDING MUSLIMS WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS THEY ARE.

1) "Who can challenge the rights of the Jews to Palestine? Good Lord, historically, it is really your country." ~ Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, Mayor of Jerusalem, in 1899. ~

2) "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement.... We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home... our two movements compliment one another." ~ Emir Faisal, a leader of the Arab world, in 1919. ~

3) Throughout his authorized biography (Alan Hart, Arafat: terrorist or peace maker) Arafat asserts at least a dozen times:
"The Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel."
~ Yasser Arafat ~

4) “We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. . . . We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.”
~ Yasser Arafat ~

5) "Peace for us means the destruction of Israel.
We are preparing for an all out war, a war which will last for generations.
~Yasser Arafat~

6) "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. For our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of Palestinian people, since Arab national interest demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism".
~ Zahir Muhse'in, Member PLO Executive and the hoax of "Palestinian" identity - March 31, 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper "Dagblad de Verdieping Trouw"~

7) "There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it".
- Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British
Peel Commission, 1937 -

9) "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria".
- Representant of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956

10) Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated: "The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 c.e. hardly lasted, as such, 22 years".

11) " There is no Palestinian nation! There is an Arab nation, but no Palestinian nation. This was invented by the colonial powers. When are the Palestinians mentioned in history? Never." ~ Azmi Bishara, former Arab Knesset member, on Israel television. ~

12) "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a mouldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent, mournful expanse... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country... Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes... desolate and unlovely...".
- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad", 1867 -

13) "In 1590 a 'simple English visitor' to Jerusalem wrote: 'Nothing there is to bescene but a little of the old walls, which is yet remayning and all the rest is grasse, mosse and weedes much like to a piece of rank or moist grounde'.".
- Gunner Edward Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund,
Quarterly Statement, p. 86; de Haas, History, p. 338 -

14) "The land in Palestine is lacking in people to till its fertile soil".
- British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, mid-1700s -

15) "Palestine is a ruined and desolate land".
- Count Constantine François Volney, XVIII century French author and historian -

16) "The Arabs themselves cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it".
- Comments by Christians concerning the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s -

17) "Then we entered the hill district, and our path lay through the clattering bed of an ancient stream, whose brawling waters have rolled away into the past, along with the fierce and turbulent race who once inhabited these savage hills. There may have been cultivation here two thousand years ago. The mountains, or huge stony mounds environing this rough path, have level ridges all the way up to their summits; on these parallel ledges there is still some verdure and soil: when water flowed here, and the country was thronged with that extraordinary population, which, according to the Sacred Histories, was crowded into the region, these mountain steps may have been gardens and vineyards, such as we see now thriving along the hills of the Rhine. Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride".
- William Thackeray in "From Jaffa To Jerusalem", 1844 -

18) "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population".
- James Finn, British Consul in 1857 -

29) "The area was underpopulated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880's, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained "The Holy Land" in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants - both Jewish and Arab. The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts... Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen... The plows used were of wood... The yields were very poor... The sanitary conditions in the village [Yabna] were horrible... Schools did not exist... The rate of infant mortality was very high... The western part, toward the sea, was almost a desert... The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants".
- The report of the British Royal Commission, 1913 -

So the concepts "Palestinians" and "Palestinian People" and "Palestinian nation" and "Palestinian national self-determination" and "historical Palestine" are all hoaxes to facilitate the Arab terrorist destruction
of Israel. What does that tell us about what possible solutions to the conflict may work?..and what does it tell us about what will NOT work?

Favorite Quotes About Jordan IS Palestine

Here are several quotes from "officials" in the so-called Palestinian community. LET THEM SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!!!!

1) "We are the Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine."
~ The Prime Minister of Jordan, Hazza' al-Majali, August 23,1959 ~

2) "Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country."
~ King Abdullah, at the Meeting of the Arab League, Cairo, 12th April 1948 ~

3) "Let us not forget the East Bank of the (River) Jordan, where seventy per cent of the inhabitants belong to the Palestinian nation."
~ George Habash, leader of the PFLP section of the PLO, writing in the PLO publication Sha-un Falastinia, February 1970

4) "Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate."
~ Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1970 ~

5) "There is no family on the East Bank of the river (Jordan) that does not have relatives on the West Bank ... no family in the west that does not have branches in the east."
~ King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1972 ~

6) "We consider it necessary to clarify to one and all, in the Arab world and outside, that the PALESTINIAN PEOPLE with its nobility and conscience is to be found HERE on the EAST Bank The WEST Bank and the Gaza Strip. Its overwhelming majority is HERE and nowhere else."
~ King Hussein, quoted in An-Hahar, Beirut, 24th August 1972 ~

7) "The Palestinians here constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces. They and their brothers, the sons of Transjordan, constitute the members of one family who are equal in everything, in rights and duties." (Quoted by BBC Monitoring Service)
~ King Hussein, on Amman Radio, 3rd February 1973 ~

8) "There are, as well, links of geography and history, and a wide range of interests between the two Banks (of the River Jordan) which have grown stronger over the past twenty years. Let us not forget that el-Salt and Nablus were within the same district - el-Balka - during the Ottoman period, and that family and commercial ties bound the two cities together."
~ Hamdi Ken'an, former Mayor of Nablus, writing in the newspaper Al-Quds, 14th March 1973 ~

9) "The new Jordan, which emerged in 1949, was the creation of the Palestinians of the West Bank and their brothers in the East. While Israel was the negation of the Palestinian right of self-determination, unified Jordan was the expression of it."
~ Sherif Al-Hamid Sharaf, Representative of Jordan at the UN Security Council, 11th June 1973 ~

10) Past "President Bourguiba (of Tunisia) considers Jordan an artificial creation presented by Great Britain to King Abdullah. But he accepts Palestine and the Palestinians as an existing and primary fact since the days of the Pharaohs. Israel, too, he considers as a primary entity. However, Arab history makes no distinction between Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians. Most of them hail from the same Arab race, which arrived in the region with the Arab Moslem conquest."
~ Editorial Comment in the Jordanian Armed Forces' weekly, Al-Aqsa, Amman, 11th July 1973 ~

11) "With all respect to King Hussein, I suggest that the Emirate of Transjordan was created from oil cloth by Great Britain, which for this purpose cut up ancient Palestine. To this desert territory to the bast of the Jordan (River)., it gave the name Transjordan. But there is nothing in history which carries this name. While since our earliest time there was Palestine and Palestinians. I maintain that the matter of Transjordan is an artificial one, and that Palestine is the basic problem. King Hussein should submit to the wishes of the people, in accordance with the principles of democracy and self-determination, so as-to avoid the fate of his grandfather, Abdullah, or of his cousin, Feisal, both of whom were assassinated."
~ Past President Bourguiba of Tunisia, in a public statement, July 1973 ~

12) "The Palestinians and the Jordanians have created on this soil since 1948 one family - all of whose children have equal rights and obligations."
~ King Hussein, addressing an American Delegation, 19th February 1975 ~

13) "How much better off Hussein would be if he had been induced to abandon his pose as a benevolent 'host' to 'refugees' and to affirm the fact that Jordan is the Palestinian Arab nation-state, just as Israel is the Palestinian Jewish nation-state."
~ Editorial Comment in the publication The Economist of 19th July 1975 ~

14) "Palestine and Jordan were both (by then) under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine."
~ King Hussein, writing in his Memoirs ~

15) "Those fishing in troubled waters will not succeed in dividing our people, which extends to both sides of the (River) Jordan, in spite of the artificial boundaries established by the Colonial Office and Winston Churchill half a century ago."
~ Yassir Arafat, in a statement to Eric Roleau ~

16) "Palestinian Arabs hold seventy-five per cent of all government jobs in Jordan."
~ The Sunday newspaper The Observer of 2nd March 1976 ~

17) "Palestinian Arabs control over seventy per cent of Jordan's economy."
~ The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram of 5th March 1976 ~

18) "There should be a kind of linkage because Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people."
~ Farouk Kadoumi, head of the PLO Political Department, quoted in Newsweek, 14th March 1977 ~

19) "Along these lines, the West German Der Spiegel magazine this month cited Dr George Habash, leader of one of the Palestinian organizations, as saying that 70 per cent of Jordan's population are Palestinians and that the power in Jordan should be seized." (Translated by BBC Monitoring Service)
~ From a commentary which was broadcast by Radio Amman, 30th June 1980 ~

20) "Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine but, rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night. Though we are all Arabs and our point of departure is that we are all members of the same people, the Palestinian-Jordanian nation is one and unique, and different from those of the other Arab states."
~ Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture, quoted by Al Rai, Amman, 24th September 1980 ~

21) "The potential weak spot in Jordan is that most of the population are not, strictly speaking, Jordanian at all, but Palestinian. An estimated 60 per cent of the country's 2,500,000 people are Palestinians ... Most of these hold Jordanian passports, and many are integrated into Jordanian society."
~ Richard Owen, in an article published in The Times, 14th November 1980 ~

22) "There is no moral justification for a second Palestine."
~ The Freeman Center (September 3, 1993) ~